Pitchfork

Few cultural moments are as indelible as the one that occurred in fin de siècle Montmartre. Capping a hill north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, the windmill-pocked neighborhood is modernly synonymous with a spirit of free-wheeling debauchery and artistic synergy. In infamous cabarets like Lapin Agile, Le Chat Noir, and Moulin Rouge, bohemian artists and bourgeois Parisians rubbed elbows with pimps and whores amid the bawdy entertainments of Jane Avril and Aristide Bruant. No artist is more emblematic of the period than the painter and lithographer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

David Berman invokes Toulouse-Lautrec's name in "Punks in the Beerlight"-- "Punks in the beerlight/ Two burnouts in love/ Punks in the beerlight/ Toulouse-Lautrec!"-- the first song on Tanglewood Numbers. With this invocation, Berman announces the aura of Tanglewood Numbers. Inextricably linked to time and place? Check. Berman's ear is still turned toward the hard-bitten rhythms and brassy twang of the American South, and his narratives still unfold in real towns and avenues.

Seamy glamour? Check. Where 2001's Bright Flight leaned into full-bore country, emphasizing Berman's voice and lyrical content, Tanglewood Numbers is a band-oriented rock record-- crashing, amped-up, aggressively ramshackle. Berman's wife Cassie, with whom he seems to be developing a Waits/Brennan (or possibly Johnny/June) relationship, reprises her vocal and inspirational role (she penned the noodly dirge "The Poor, the Fair and the Good"); Stephen Malkmus contributes some raucous, cutting guitars; drummer Brian Kotzur and keyboardist Tony Crow supply a yawing foundation; Paz Lenchantin flecks the songs with banjo and violin. These diverse players lurch into a shit-faced stumble to forge a remarkably drunken-sounding record in the angry crucible of sobriety, a rock'n'roll hayride kicking up feathers and peanut shells.

The most interesting parallel between Toulouse-Lautrec's art and Tanglewood Numbers is the signature blend of jubilance and sorrow. Montmartre wasn't all fun and games by a long shot-- what was a thrilling diversion for wealthy Parisians was a harsh reality for its insolvent denizens, and in Toulouse-Lautrec's work, a sense of alienation and hopelessness undercuts the vibrant subject matter. His dingy washes of grey and green allude to the cheap, soul-hollowing aspects of taking pleasure from class division, and no two gazes or trajectories intersect, subtly isolating each of his subjects in their own existential void. Again, the parallel is striking: While Tanglewood Numbers is probably Silver Jews' most fun album to date, with its riotous guitars and rambling sing-along hooks, it's also their saddest, an outsized hangover that makes everything into sharp edges and toe-stubbing impediments, with a patina of dizzy anxiety on every blaring chord.

Berman rarely gives interviews or performs, but after a recent spate of press, we all know the story-- the long party turned sinister; the rehabilitation and relapses; the eventual resurfacing into the hard, clear light of day. We see this arc play out over the course of Tanglewood Numbers, as Berman moves between sick inebriation, pissy withdrawal, grudging temperance, and a tentative state of acceptance. The first three songs are pure desperation. Over the nervously coasting guitars of "Punks in the Beerlight", Berman searches for the paper bag that holds the liquor in case he needs to puke. When his wife ventures some hope with the promise "If it ever gets really really bad," Berman interrupts her with the addict's grim realism: "Let's not kid ourselves, it gets really really bad." The rollicking "Sometimes a Pony Gets Depressed" uses hokey barnyard imagery to veil a deeper personal point about Berman's desire for sanctuary, posing questions like, "Where does an animal sleep when the ground is wet?" Let's not kid ourselves; it's pretty clear who the animal in question is. And the woozily bending "K-Hole" finds Berman utterly succumbing to selfishness and self-destruction: "I've been living in a k-hole ever since you went away/ I'd rather live in a trash can than see you happy with another man."

But it's around this time that a softening occurs. On the countrified duet "Animal Shapes", Berman's attention shifts from himself to the world around him, as he watches snow fall and muses about God carving the clouds into animal shapes. The revelatory line is "The last dream left worth believing starts with animal shapes," as the addict returns to the objective world beyond his own physical sensations and the spiritual dimensions of that world. "I'm Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You" displays the same startled attention to a life that almost passed by unnoticed. But healing doesn't happen that quickly or cleanly, and through the unfettered elation of "How Can I Love You if You Won't Lie Down", and the romantic devotion of "The Poor, the Fair and the Good" and "Sleeping Is the Only Love", the album stumbles toward a complex suspension of grace and regret.

Suffice it to say about "The Farmer's Hotel" that when Berman finally finds the shelter he's been longing for, it's not all it's cracked up to be: "There's no natural law that can explain what I saw/ Spread out on that straw-covered floor." The album's final song, then, is also its centerpiece, summarizing its narrative and musical arcs in one bravura performance. "There Is a Place" moves between placid pastoralia and stark, incantatory rock, and finds Berman in aphoristic poet-sage mode: "There is a place past the blues I never want to see again" and "I saw God's shadow on this world"-- the sort of talk associated with prophets, mystics and madmen, recipients of divine visitation, apocalyptics, and near-death survivors. Peeking over the rim of oblivion and returning to tell the tale isn't a novel concept, but it's one of lasting interest, because we all want to know what's over there without having to find out firsthand. And so Berman returns, shaken but intact and leavened with hard-earned wisdom, to give us a glimpse that's so unglamorous it makes us grateful for the banal luxury we take for granted-- some good music, friends to share it with, and a warm, dry place to hear a story.